Damn I love this country.  In the recent "Most Admired Man" competition, guess who comes out on top?

George W. Bush, of course!  

Okay, so I probably don't have the authority to do a WYFP diary, but WTF!

FWIW I'm sitting here alone in my house on Christmas Eve.  Not for long, but it's still kind of a strange feeling.  

Let's face it:  A lot of people hate the holidays.  I used to be one of them.  I wished I could go some place where Christmas simply didn't exist.  Cuba?  I've heard it's nice there.  I met someone from Sri Lanka a few weeks ago and I asked them about it -- they said they did indeed ceelebrate Christmas there, and then reminded me of the Tsunami that hit them two years ago, making quite possibly the worst Christmas in history for them.  After that I didn't feel so bad, in fact I felt kind of like an idiot for feeling so sorry for myself.  

Consider that something close to 80% of the population thinks Congress sucks, Dick Cheney sucks, President Bush sucks, and the country is on the wrong track

Consider the fact that even here, on an extremely popular site which was started with the express goal of electing Democrats to office, a huge percentage of the people are completely disillusioned and dissatisfied with that very party.   (And for damn good reason.)

What we are presented with is a vacuum.  A vacuum of leadership and representation.  

In business terms, there is a strong demand, but no supply.  

In business terms, this is a gold mine of an opportunity.  The chance of a lifetime.  

For years now, I've been trying to figure out the Democratic Party and why it operates the way that it does.  I've given a great deal of time and study to this quandary.  I was especially vexed, as are so many of us, when time after time the Democrats had the chance to figuratively "kill off" the Republicans for good, yet seemed to refuse to actually do so.  "Wimps!" we scolded.  "Spineless!" we accused.  "Stupid!" we fumed.  "Incompetent!" we assumed.

Well one day I realized ....

Do you really think this is about waterboarding?

You've taken the bait.

Do you really think they would destroy tapes that showed mere waterboarding?

They WANT you to hysterically scream "waterboarding is torture!" over and over again.  That's exactly what they want!

What they're really doing is genital mutilation and rape and torturing children in front of their parents.  And God-Only-Knows what other sadistic and medievel bullshit.  

Quit falling for their shit!  I've written two dairies in two nights about this, and still all anybody wants to hear about is the "waterboarding" lie.  

Enough!

It just dawned on me tonight, all this talk and discussion, especially in our esteemed "press" and from our distinguished "leaders" about "harsh interrogation techniques" (i.e. torture) always concentrates on this concept of "waterboarding".  

Here's one little sample, from a current (and excellent) diary by Valtin:

They were "given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk." The reported techniques are said to have included waterboarding.

I'm sick of this.  Every discussion about our torturing people, whether it's the Mukasey confirmation or anything else, concentrates on this goddamn "waterboarding" to the exclusion of all the other torture techniques that we know have been used.  Why, you'd think that "waterboarding" was absolutely the worst technique used!  

Which is exactly what they want us to think.

How about genital mutilation?  Because that's what they've been doing, and there is photographic evidence of it.  

It's pretty hard to spin this:

Binyam Mohammed was born in Ethiopia but was given leave to remain in the UK after seeking asylum in 1994. Seven years later, he travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan where the Americans allege that he underwent training in firearms and explosives. In 2002, he was arrested by Pakistani immigration officials at Karachi airport on his way back to the UK. He says he was then taken to Morocco and tortured for 18 months, including having his penis slashed, before being sent to Guantanamo, where he still remains.

Mr Stafford-Smith added in his letter: "As you know, the only purported basis for the US holding Mr Mohammed is an allegation that he is an ('illegal') enemy combatant. Five-and-a-half years after his initial seizure, he is not currently charged in a military commission, and he has never been offered a fair trial. As you are aware, Mr Mohammed was rendered to Morocco by the CIA and tortured for 18 months in a way that was medieval.

"What did they know and when did they know it?"

Well, Dick Cheney knew about the report over a year ago.  That means he's known the truth about Iran and it's total lack of a weapons program for over a year.

How do we know this?  Because he he has spent this last year trying to get the report changed.  Yes, he's been fighting them for over a year to get that report to say what he wanted it to say.  The way he did back in 2002 when he got them to lie about Iraq.  

This time, he failed.  

And we are left wondering:  Did Iran ever have a nuclear weapons program at all?

Okay, I'm no legal expert but tell me something.

I just turned on the TV and was flipping channels and CNN and MSNBC are carrying Mitt Romney's speech LIVE.

Yes, they are carrying the speech, apparently in its entirety, LIVE.

Like it's some kind of "Big Deal" to America.  It's not.  It's just some wanna-be politician trying to b.s. his way into office.  

Can someone tell me how this is NOT breaking campaign finance law?

This is a FREE CAMPAIGN COMMERCIAL FOR ROMNEY.  A DONATION.  FROM MAJOR NEWS CORPORATIONS.  TWO OF THEM!  (heck, I didn't even check Foks News, so it's probably three!)

Imagine if Boeing gave Romney his own 767 to fly around in.  THAT'S what this is equivalent to.  

We all know the government often lies, especially during the last seven years or so of Bush and Company.  However, we sort of expect the career bureaucrats who crunch numbers and provide us with all  official statistics to be largely out of the Lying Pool.  Right?  Well ....

Anybody who's been to the grocery store lately might have noticed that the price of food hasn't exactly been going down.

And a new study reports that many Americans soon won't be able to afford the most nutritious food -- namely fresh fruits and vegetables.

Also, not long ago in China, three people were killed in a stampede attempting to buy discounted cooking oil.  

As climate change and growing urban populations (people who don't grow their own food) exacerbate the problem, we can only expect more of these problems.  Follow me over the speed bump as I attempt a bit of "truthiness" and show you the difference between the govermnent figures (read: lies) and what's actually going on.

One thing that's been a universal theme here and at other "reality-based" blogs the past few years has been the utter shock and awe we have all felt upon seeing the brazen lying by the mainstream corporate media.  

Almost every day you can find the most infuriating examples of how they have been constantly lying to the American people, at the behest of their corporate "management" (read: neo-cons and Republican cronies).  There's plenty of blame to go around, of course, but how things got to this disgusting level of propaganda isn't the point I'm pursuing here.  

Because the big question has been "how do we stop them?"

The ubiquitous answer is "well, you can't stop them, because they're protected by the First Amendment."

Well guess what?  There are limits to the First Amendment, and we all know what they are.  Follow me behind for how we can make this work.

Last night, around 10 pm PT, I decided to check and see what the MSM was reporting on the Giuliani scandal.  I abhor CNN already, but thought if any site would be a fairly typical indicator of the corporate media's bias, it would be they.  

There wasn't a thing about it on their front page.  Not one.  I decided to go over to MSNBC.com, home of Olberman, the only person telling the truth in the MSM these days, and it was the same deal.  Nothing.

So today, is it any different?

Poor little old Ann Coulter:

Coulter, 45, has called Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards a ''faggot'' and said she wished he would be killed by terrorists. She once said President Clinton ''could be a lunatic'' and wrote of a group of widows of men killed in the World Trade Center that she had 'never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much.''

So maybe it came as no surprise when somebody delivered a greeting card to her home in March with this salutation: ``You self-aggrandizing -- sociopath!! The only thing left after a nuclear war are you and cockroaches.''

Gosh, that's so harsh!  Considering she's a violence-mongering "woman" who said the best way to talk to is with 2x4's, why is she upset?  If she talks so tough, what's she scared of?

I have to say I never really paid that much attention to Dennis Kucinich until the last debate.   In 2004, when Kucinich was also a candidate, I was a Howard Dean guy who with the greatest reluctance got behind the "electable" John Kerry, so I never really paid much attention to Kucinich.  

This time, I find myself able to only support one candidate, and that is Dennis Kucinich.  Because he's the only one speaking the damn truth.  You know when you've been bullshitted on for so long -- pissed on and told it's raining -- and when your own party leaders refuse to call the piss what it actually is, and refuse to even acknowledge that you and everybody else is drowning in piss -- when somebody comes alng and simply speaks the truth.  The truth!  It's a very simple thing, really, the truth.  It's pure, it cuts like sunlight through the fog, and it tastes like the freshest, coldest water on a hot dirty day.  Instead of like piss.  

The truth.  Kucinich is the only one speaking it.  

"They are proselytizing not on behalf of the Constitution of the United States and the national security interests of our country but rather on behalf of some sort of fanatical view of end times. And they are using our army to affect that."
-- Ambassador Joe Wilson

Mikey Weinstein, a former Air Force JAG and White House attorney for Ronald Reagan, has received over 6,000 complains from military personnel about being harassed by Evangelical "Christians".  95% of these complains come from people who are, actually, already Christians.  

California suing voting machine maker for $15 million

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen on Monday sued a Nebraska voting machine company, seeking fines and reimbursements of nearly $15 million from the firm for allegedly selling nearly 1,000 uncertified machines to San Francisco and four other counties.

I love Debra Bowen.  She's an elected Democrat who's actually following through on her campaign promises.  Imagine that.  

This from The Guardian today:

Oil leaders' private debate televised by mistake

And the money quote:

Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, warned that even the mere mention to journalists of the fact that leaders were discussing the weak dollar would cause the US currency to plummet.

Oops, too late.  Turns out nobody was supposed to know that OPEC leaders are discussing how the crippled dollar is damaging the cartel ...

Fox News' Brian Kilmeade:

"Could we start arming the anti-government groups inside Iran; could their cars start blowing up like our Humvees - maybe in Tehran, so they wouldn't be doing it in Baghdad?"

Says the General he's interviewing:

"Yeah absolutely -"

- and suddenly the satellite signal is lost.

Video after the fold ...